Destiny of the Republic

Candice Millard recounts the July 1881 assassination of President James Garfield and the months of medical incompetence that transformed a non-fatal bullet wound into a fatal infection, killing him in September. The book weaves together political ambition, the deranged office-seeker Charles Guiteau, the pioneering antiseptic science of Joseph Lister and the era's primitive American medicine.

ISBN 9781594136146 · Doubleday · 2011